William Pole (politician, 1515)

Funerary monument of William Pole in the Pole Chapel of Colyton Church

William Pole (also Powle or Poley ) (born August 9, 1515 , † around August 21, 1587 in Old Shute House ) was an English politician who was elected three times as a member of the House of Commons .

origin

William Pole came from the Pole family , which had belonged to the gentry of Devon since the 15th century at the latest . He was the only son of his father of the same name, William Pole, and his second wife, Agnes Drake , a daughter of John Drake from Ash in Devon. He studied at the Inner Temple in London, where he later became a Fellow in 1547 and a Bencher in 1556 .

Activity as a politician

In 1541 Pole was a young lawyer in Lyme Regis . In the 1545 general election, he was elected as the first member of the Pole family as MP for Lyme Regis, although there was apparent opposition to his election. After he had probably not run in the elections in 1547 and in the spring of 1553, he was elected as MP for Bridport in the general election in October 1553 . Pole had no direct connection with the borough , which is why he owed his election to John Paulet, Lord St John , who held the office of high steward in both Lyme Regis and Bridport , and Robert Tytherleigh , the assistant steward of Bridport, was closely involved Pole related.

Pole became prosperous through his work as a lawyer and through the acquisition of land from churches and monasteries that were dissolved during the Reformation. Around 1560 Pole was able to acquire Shute House . The house had belonged to Henry Gray, 1st Duke of Suffolk and was confiscated by the Crown after his fall in 1554. First it fell to the royal secretary Sir William Petre , who eventually sold Shute to Pole. During the reign of Elizabeth I , Pole was elected as a member of Parliament for West Looe in the general election in 1559 , where he was probably elected as a candidate for the influential Earl of Bedford . Probably Pole was not a staunch Protestant like Bedford, so that he was not run again as a candidate in the following elections. He received no other offices except for the offices of Justice of the Peace for Dorset and Devon and from about 1564 the office of City Council in Lyme Regis. Instead, he likely retired to his Shute House country estate.

Funerary memorial for Katherine Popham, second wife of William Pole, in Colyton Church

Family and offspring

On November 19, 1548, Pole had married Thomasin , a daughter of John Tudoll from Lyme Regis, who was twice widowed . She was the widow of John Strowbridge († 1539) from Streathayne near Colyton and of William Beaumont († 1547). The marriage remained childless. In his second marriage before 1559 he married Katherine Popham , a daughter of John Popham of Huntsworth , Somerset . With her he had five sons and two daughters. His exact date of death is unknown, he was buried on August 24, 1587 in the parish church of Colyton. His heir became his eldest son, Sir William Pole .

Web links

• Helen Miller: POLE (POWLE, POLEY), William (1515-87), of Colyford and Shute, Devon and the Inner Temple, London. (History of Parliament Online, Ref Volumes: 1509–1558)
• Helen Miller, PW Hasler: POLE (POLEY), William I (1515-87), of Colyford and Shute, Devon. (History of Parliament Online, Ref Volumes: 1558–1603)
• William Pole on thepeerage.com , accessed November 15, 2017.